


You (will) Know My Name

by AlchemyAlice



Series: Tabula Rasa [2]
Category: James Bond - All Media Types, Skyfall (2012) - Fandom
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Metafiction, Post-Skyfall
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-08
Updated: 2014-05-08
Packaged: 2018-01-24 00:47:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,957
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1585532
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AlchemyAlice/pseuds/AlchemyAlice
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bond isn't a ghost, not yet. Not if Q has anything to say about it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	You (will) Know My Name

**Author's Note:**

> This is part of an effort to clear out a bunch of WIPs I've had lying around for ages. It took a very strange turn by the end. Hopefully it works all right. But more importantly, it is no longer unfinished.

Bond is different, now that he’s back from Skyfall. 

Time has passed, of course, since that debacle. Mallory made sure that Bond had actually passed all of his field tests properly before letting him back into the lower levels of MI-6, which had taken several weeks. And then there’d been M’s funeral to attend to, and the slow, meticulous closing and locking of all the doors Silva had blasted open. 

Q hadn’t seen Bond in all of that time. But now he’s here, one hand in his trouser pocket, looking like the elegantly-dressed blunt object that he is. 

Q observes his expression, or lack thereof—it’s so blank as to somehow become another entity entirely, a photographic negative. The stiffness in his gait and the square lines of his shoulders beneath pristine suiting chronicle his old and new injuries, as well as serving to carefully mask any emotional tells that he might have (though at this point, Q has grudgingly accepted the notion that Bond is good enough to have almost no tells at all). Old dog he might be, but lacking tricks? Perish the thought. 

“Good morning, 007,” Q says, making no effort to conceal his study. “Welcome back.”

Bond replies, “I’ve been back for five days.”

“And you didn’t come down here immediately to harass me about exploding tie clips and the like? I think I’m hurt.”

“You’ll survive, I’m sure,” Bond murmurs. He comes to stand next to Q, looking at the monitors displayed on the wall, the hand not in his pocket resting lightly on the table next to the laptop. Q looks absently at scars across his knuckles, neatly-trimmed nails, and calluses. 

“What can I do for you, Bond?” he asks finally. “They’re not sending you off already, are they?”

“No,” Bond agrees, with a hint of irony that very clearly says that they _would_ send him off already, without hesitation, if there was a need. “Not yet.” He pauses. “I had hoped to ask you a favour, actually.”

Q does his best not to look surprised, but he’s fairly sure he only half-succeeds. A diffident Bond is a rare one indeed. 

“Oh?” he asks, neutral.

“Mm,” Bond agrees. “It will no doubt annoy some people.”

“Some people,” Q clarifies, “Or M?”

Bond twitches his lips, curving them slightly upwards. “Can’t it be both?”

“Hm.” Q’s loyalty is to M first, no matter how new he is; but to be perfectly honest, he’s curious. “Well?” he prompts, after a moment.

“My file,” Bond replies, still not taking his eyes off the monitors. “The 12B-Classified one. I want it buried.”

Q bristles a bit. “If you’re worried about security—“

“I’m not,” Bond assures him. “Consider it more…a symbolic gesture.”

Q regards him for a moment, this time with greater scrutiny than when he first came in. Bond endures it without any apparent discomfort. 

“A personal statement?” Q suggests at last.

“Or lack thereof,” Bond agrees. 

The 12B-Classified file on Bond is not an extensive one, which in itself is highly unusual. Most 12Bs are a minimum of a hundred pages, and yet Bond’s clocks in at barely half that. But that is what happens when one is orphaned, left almost entirely adrift, possessing only an unremarkable student record (with the exception of an acknowledged facility for languages and getting in fights) and an impressive-but-scrubbed university career. When one is plucked from said university and groomed in electronic silence, and when one’s personal liaisons are restricted to those that occurred out in the field? Well. The blanks get bigger and bigger, the glossed summaries vaguer and vaguer.

So yes, Bond’s classified personal file is remarkably thin. But it does exist. It contains names like Quantum and Vesper and most recently, Severine, all with references that ask that the reader consult Bond’s professional dossier for further, though less intimate, details. 

And Bond wants it buried.

Q doesn’t need to be a genius to understand why.

“You aren’t retired yet, you know,” he says, after a moment. “That is, unless Mallory has something to say about it. You’re going to be back on record soon enough.”

“Indeed,” Bond says. “But it’s always nice to build on cleared ground, don’t you think?”

Q ducks his head, and draws up the file. “I’ll see what I can do, 007. Will that be all?”

“Yes,” Bond replies, though he doesn’t move from his place next to Q. “That will be all.”

He stays there for nearly an hour, watching as Q layers electronic dirt and refuse over the coffin of 007’s classified file. 

“M will still be able to access it,” Q says at one point. “M and I. But that’s it.”

“That’s fine,” Bond says. 

Q takes a chance. “I’m sorry about Skyfall.”

Bond looks at him finally, rather than at the computer screen. “I’m not,” he says.

And that’s it. 

***

They all close ranks around him, unconsciously or not. Q notices, but he’s not sure the others do. 007 comes into Q branch, irritating employees left and right, and yet he is always respected in the end, always defended when the higher ups from adjacent branches and the oversight committees come to ask them whether he’s worth it, this assassin with a wit and a grim talent. He is a part of them, inextricable from the organisation, even more than the other 00s, who have been there for a shorter time, and are competent and deadly but ultimately unremarkable— _proper_ spies, in other words. 

Q very much suspects that he’s the only one who truly recognises this differentiation. But then again, he also suspects that he was the one who set this precedent; who decided, after M was gone, that 007 is worth the hassle and the broken equipment, is worth everything that M had given him. Bond has earned Q’s respect, and Q is naturally loyal to the few who manage to do that.

007 is needed. Or more importantly, James Bond is needed. When the chips are well and truly down, he is always needed.

And so they work from there.

“You rang?” Bond says. He has regained some of his customary swagger, but it’s narrower than before, more staid. 

“Indeed. I have something for you.”

Bond looks at the object Q has pushed to the edge of his desk. It is a silver square, mostly boring in appearance.

“Another radio?” Bond inquires.

“Mm,” Q says, “But this one also records audio, recognises morse code and transmits it back to headquarters, and as a last resort, can detonate a block of C4 if you plant this in one first.” He slides what looks like a matching silver matchstick over. It helpfully sticks to the side of the silver square with the faint _snick_ of magnetic plates aligning. 

Bond ruminates on this for a moment, blunt fingers tracing the edges of the square and its matching detonator. “You’ve been studying,” he says eventually. 

“Don’t take it as a compliment,” Q retorts. Never mind that he _has_ been studying, has watched all the footage and read all of the files, has memorised every last bit of Bond’s escapades because he won’t have this agent run down by a bloody train, he won’t have him drown in a fen, or get gunned down in a Mumbai alleyway. More than anything, Bond and Skyfall was Q's final exam for MI6, showing him the true outer limits of his job, and Q will be _damned_ , after having failed that and still been kept on, if he repays that with negligence. “You have a very distinctive operational style, 007. It is my job to accommodate.”

Bond scoops up the radio and detonator, depositing them in the inside breast pocket of his suit jacket. He leans slightly forward into Q’s space as he says, “No, it isn’t.”

And then he leaves.

“No,” Q says to the empty room, “It isn’t.”

***

Bond gets sent off to Istanbul, and then Seoul. He returns with his gun and a thin cut across his cheekbone that bleeds sluggishly until Eve clucks her tongue and shoves a styptic pencil at him. 

“The radio?” Q asks, when Bond comes down to his department.

“Useful,” Bond answers. His hands stay at his side.

“Useful, and used,” Q observes, after a pause. “You couldn’t have at least gotten some of it back?”

At that, Bond cuts him a very thin smile, but his eyes show a spark of amusement. “Where’s the fun in that?”

Q sighs. “I’m going to have to start charging you for these things, aren’t I?”

“Past Qs have tried and failed,” Bond says equably. “But don’t let that stop you.”

“Hm.”

***

To his credit, Bond manages to keep his gun for a record six weeks. 

He loses it to a Moscow printing press, which chews it up and spits it out in pieces, each one of them ink-stained. 

Bond returns that time with black still around his nails and in the creases of his hands, which clearly irritates him, as he keeps them shoved in his pockets for as much of the time as he can manage. 

Q accepts the one part of the gun left with a scowl, and is only mollified when he finds it accompanied by the silver radio, this one being version 3.2. “Helpful?” he asks.

“As per usual,” Bond replies, but there’s a roughness in his voice that says he’s tired. 

Q nods at his hands. “Acetone,” he suggests. “It’s good for dissolving stains.”

“Among other things,” Bond nods. “But newspaper ink tends to linger. More stubborn than blood, I daresay.”

“How fitting, given the present state of the media.” 

“Getting political, are we?”

“Hardly. Get some sleep, 007, and thank you for the radio.”

***

MI6 resumes its status as a well-oiled machine, eventually. The feeling of the organisation is different under Mallory, which is not unexpected, but also not something that Q had actively foreseen. The previous M’s reign had been one of clear and present struggle, of her power and will being exerted through sharp words and a sharper wit, because she had known that she was an outlier in a network of old boys, and had decided that calculated savagery would make her voice heard loudest and most clearly. 

She had been right. Under her, the 00s and all of their internal support had been flinty and efficient, terrifying in their inexorability, an expression of paradigm shifts. Bond had been the exception to that, almost; oh, he was flinty, he was _brutally_ efficient, but he was the hyper-masculine face of that same old boy network that M had loathed, and Q had not been aware of how strange their mutual regard had been in that context, until Mallory took her place. 

It's when he does notice that he begins to wonder whether there is more to Bond than what meets the eye.

“What are you working on?”

Q doesn’t move, except for his eyes, which swivel up with suitably sceptical inefficiency.

“Do you really want to know?”

“Yes,” Bond says, and it’s his lack of affect that get Q’s attention; apparently, what’s going on in Q-branch is indeed _exactly_ what he wants to know about, at this moment.

“We’re working on quadrant-level encryption. Or rather, Lindsey is working on that, while I’m working on developing a unique programming language that will be indecipherable to foreign hackers, and Matthew is looking after 003 on his trip to Johannesburg.”

Bond nods, and says, “Does that mean that the CIA won’t be on our comms anymore?”

“They will not,” Q says, with some affront, because the fact that some foreign nation—never mind that it was a friendly one—had at some point been listening in on their transmissions, was thoroughly distasteful, and unprofessional to boot.  

“Will anyone know this language of yours other than you?” Bond queries.

“I’ll alert the department,” Q says stiffly.

“Hmm,” Bond says.

In the next three hours, Q finds himself explaining his programming vocabulary to James Bond, of all people. 

“Why are you down here?” he demands, eventually.

“Mallory likes tufted leather too much for my taste,” Bond responds. “It’s far too comfortable. I like challenges, Q, or hadn’t you noticed?”

Q has nothing to say to that, except to shove a C++ manual at him. 

Of course, his high opinion gets knocked back down when he next enters the office only to find Bond on the receiving end of a stinging slap from Lindsey.

“I probably deserved that,” Bond says as she strides away, looking mostly unbothered. His left cheek is turning pink.

“I daresay. You really are a bit of a pig, aren’t you?” Q says, making a mental note to congratulate Lindsey—that was a hell of a swing.

“‘Misogynist dinosaur’ was my favourite,” Bond replies, a little wistfully. 

“Did you learn programming just to talk to her, or have you actually put your new skills to use?” Q inquires, a little acidly. 

“Q, surely you know by now that I am an expert in multitasking,” he says, sliding over to Q’s desk. He produces from his inside breast pocket a silver flash drive that Q recognises from his private store. He narrows his eyes at it. Bond must have palmed it when he wasn’t looking a few days earlier. 

“Dare I ask what is on that?”

“You were expressing your displeasure with the American chatter the other day, before regaling me with your computer linguistic genius,” Bond says, a little drolly, though not enough to irritate Q any further. “I took the liberty of adding some flourishes to your scrambling algorithm.” He shrugs. “It’s probably not as elegant as it could be, but I know of at least a few colleagues who might enjoy it.”

Q isn’t sure he wants to know what definition of ‘enjoy’ Bond might be using, but he takes back the flash drive anyway. “Hm,” he says. “Anything else?”

“No,” Bond says. But then he nods slightly at the projection that several of Q’s staff are pouring over on the far wall. “They’ve missed a strand, though.”

Q peers over at it. _Blast._ “I would have caught that before it went out,” he says.

“No doubt,” Bond agrees. “Good day, Q.”

“Hm,” Q says again, disgruntled. 

***

“He’s recalibrating,” Eve says one day, while lingering in Q-Branch after delivering some paperwork. She appears to be adapting to Mallory exceedingly well—she rarely seems to need summoning, and Mallory never seems to be difficult for her to track down either, no matter where in the building he is. Perhaps, Q speculated, it hadn’t been so much that Eve was unsuited to field work, but rather that it wasn’t what she was _most_ suited to. 

The prospect is mildly terrifying; Eve had been _very_ good at field work.

“How do you mean? And who?” The latter question is mostly feigned ignorance—Eve and Q have been at the core of the metaphorical circling of wagons that has been occupying MI-6 in the wake of Silva, and the only others truly standing in that centre with them have been Mallory, Tanner, and Bond. 

Of those three, Eve and Q only ever talk about Bond. 

“James. He’s re-drawing all of his boundaries in the office, re-categorising everyone for optimum efficiency.”

“Ah. And the categories?”

“Judging by the way he interacts with them?” She ticks them off on her fingers. “Peons, faceless colleagues, and useful colleagues.” 

Q raises an eyebrow. “Are you keeping a chart?”

“I should. If only to wave it in his face and demand to have a fourth column.”

“I’m fairly certain he doesn’t want a fourth,” Q replies. “Or wants to erase the one that’s there.”

“Which is why I ought to wave it in his face,” Eve retorts. “Don’t you think?”

“Well,” Q says, noncommittally. “It’s going to be there no matter what, anyway.”

Because the fourth column is the one that Bond can’t shake—after all, he might act like he’s building from the ground up, but that still requires earth, and stone and mortar. Like it or not, a good portion of MI-6 was around to know him before Skyfall. He’s had a long and illustrious career. Moreover, a spare few of those people, the ones still alive and the ones who know him best, choose to remember him for it. Q knows that he himself, stepping into Boothroyd’s shoes, is a member of the new guard, but he likes to think that he’s one of those choice few anyway. 

“Leave it be,” he advises. “If he wants to finish recalibrating, as you say, then we ought to respect what he’s turning into.”

“And what’s that?” Eve asks, eyebrow raised.

“I guess we’ll see,” Q replies, and leaves it at that.

***

(“Do you miss her?” he asks once, and only once, because it’s a stupid question, and Q is far from stupid.

“Yes,” Bond answers, and it is an everlasting yes, a yes for M and a yes for Vesper. 

Later, he says, “She bought me my first tuxedo. The first real one.”

Q understands. A woman who gives you armour even while she strips another set away is quite a woman indeed.)

***

Bond gets comfortable with computers. He had been adept enough before, but now when he is sent into the field, he takes less and less of an issue with Q’s curt instructions over the comms, and begins, indeed, to anticipate them. 

He manages to crack a database in Nicaragua without Q’s help, and Q has to violently suppress any feelings of proprietary pride. 

In tandem, however, Bond also seems to smooth himself. He lets Eve give him pointers on sniping, until even when he aims with a handgun his stillness over the rise and fall of his breath is uncanny. 

His sarcasm becomes clipped, never a word out of place. 

Mallory is pleased with him, and sends him out more and more often.

“M thinks he’s matured,” Eve reports over drinks one evening. 

“I don’t know if ‘matured’ is the right word,” Q says. 

Eve gives him an appraising look. “Worried?”

“Never.”

***

Q might worry a little. Mostly because he doesn’t know how Bond is going to sustain this new…face? style? He can’t describe it entirely. 

Bond single-handedly takes out a terrorist camp in Siberia. It’s messy, and not in the purview of his mission. M yells at him for a good half hour before letting him go. Instead of heading straight home, Bond goes to Q-branch afterwards.

“Flashy,” Q comments. “Haven’t done that in a while.”

“Got bored,” Bond replies lightly. “Any footage you’ve had to scrub?”

It’s protocol—when there are 00s involved, Q-branch is in charge of scrubbing all the surveillance systems they can find of the agent’s presence at any given scene. It made keeping aliases far easier than it used to be before everything went digital. 

“You’ll have to ask Mina,” Q says. “She’s going through it now.”

Bond nods, and slides away towards Mina’s work station. She, used to his presence by now, twitches only slightly, and then tilts her screen so he can look over her shoulder.

“Only two clips so far, one on the southeast corner of the alley here, and one as you were exiting the building. That last one’s pretty much secure anyway, though—the data was all being sent to the internal servers, which, well—“

“Are no more,” Bond finishes, nodding. He frowns. “The southeast corner, you said? I missed that one.”

“No worries, we’ve got it,” Mina says, sounding slightly puzzled. “What we’re here for.”

“Yes, of course,” Bond murmurs. “Thank you, Ms. Franklin.”

She flushes slightly, but her nod is neutral and contained. 

The next mission out, Bond doesn’t show up on any footage except the satellite imaging that directly feeds back to MI-6.

“You realise that’s bloody inconvenient for me, don’t you?” Q asks him, afterwards. “Others can’t find you, sure, but neither can I. We’ll scrub you from the record afterwards, I guarantee.”

Bond just smiles thinly at him. “Of course,” he says, and doesn't mean it. 

***

A ghost. That’s the word Q was looking for. That is what Bond is trying to be.

***

It isn’t sustainable. Bond’s cover gets blown in Geneva, and he comes back angry, though with the files he was sent to secure intact. 

Q exhales slowly, and gets back to work.

The next time Bond comes in, the silver square that Q presents him with is slightly thicker, and one panel of it slides off into a thin adhering disc.

“EMP,” Q says briefly. “Last resort only, please. But it’ll knock out everything in a twenty-foot radius. Not the broadest range, but enough to disable mobiles and other inconveniences of the modern age.”

Bond’s smile warms for just a moment, but it’s enough. “Thank you, Q,” he says, and reassembles the pieces of the instrument into its original shape.  

“Just my job,” Q replies. 

This time, Bond doesn’t comment on the lie, just takes it and tucks it in his pocket along with the little silver square.

***

It becomes a challenge, between the two of them. Find Bond during the missions, and afterwards, make it even harder to find him. 

M notices.

“What game are you playing at, precisely?” he says at one point, peering at the monitors where Bond appears and disappears within seconds. If he wasn’t on comms, Q would be panicking. 

“No play involved, sir,” Q says. “Bond is just trying to improve his ability to stay under the radar.”

“He’s not supposed to stay under _our_ radar.”

“He’s always been exemplary to the point of exaggeration,” Q points out.

“I don’t know if ‘exemplary’ is the word I’d choose,” M says, desert-dry. A small, controlled explosion rocks the building on screen. Bond appears for a split second on the roof and then promptly disappears into a maze of rooftop gardens.

“Target neutralised,” he reports over the comms. “All data required is salvaged, and the site is ready for the cleanup crew.”

“Yes, I’ll be sure to send them in when it’s not on fire anymore,” Q complains. 

M sighs. “Thank you, 007. Your rendezvous is on the other side of the city and will be expecting you at 1600 hours. Do try not to get lost between now and then.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” Bond replies. Q even chalks it up as likely—no women to distract him on this particular outing. 

The comm goes quiet, and M shoves his hands into his pockets. “I daresay he has gotten more effective in recent months,” he allows.

“Indeed, sir,” Q says.

M gives him a knowing look. “What will you do about rooftop imaging?”

“Localised scrambler,” Q responds automatically, “Maybe built into his jacket.” Then he winces.

M sighs again. It seems to be a catching characteristic—the previous M had done a great deal of exasperated sighing as well. “At least give some of the other 00s the same,” he says eventually. “Some of them are like bulls in china shops in comparison to Bond, which makes me think that something has gone terribly wrong in their training along the way.”

“Yes, sir,” Q nods.

M turns towards the exit. “Eve, make a note, please,” he mutters, as Eve falls into step with him in the hallway. “I have indirectly called James Bond subtle, and would therefore like to reschedule my next psychological exam for as soon as possible.”

“Happens to the best of us, sir,” Eve says, and pats his arm sympathetically.

Q smirks, catches the rest of his department staring, and barks, “Enough pottering about please! I need the cleanup crew on call.”

They spring back to work. Q starts drawing up designs for the scrambler on a spare notepad.

***

Q finally puts it together while Bond is in Dubai, tied to a chair, with a knife pressed to the thin skin just under his jaw. Q has visuals, for once, because Bond dropped his phone among the storage boxes that line the room. It’s not a pretty sight, and not an ideal one, mission-wise, but Q is riveted for more than one reason.

“Tell me who sent you,” the cartel manager hisses. Blood trickles down Bond’s chin.

Bond, predictably, does not answer. Q manages to force a few of the outside doors to give up their electronic locking systems, but the final two padlocks, Bond will have to get out of himself. 

“Tell me,” the manager repeats, and tilts the knife.

And the look Bond gives his interrogator is neither defiant nor angry. There’s a coolness to the tight pull of his mouth, and his staring contest with the manager is no contest at all—his blink is insouciant, slow and disdainful.

It is not the blink of a man trying to protect himself or his secrets. It is the blink of an assured, clear-eyed operative with a view of the whole playing field.

It is M’s gaze. 

Not Mallory’s.

Q says very quietly into the comm, “Outer three doors are open, two men in each room, four guards on the outside of the exit. All armed.”

Bond doesn’t look away from the manager. “Done and done,” he says, and breaks the legs of his chair with the knees of the manager.

The rest of his exit is equally grisly. But Mallory was right—he has gotten more efficient. Within seven minutes he’s out the door, the armed guards tied into knots. Bond works the kinks out of his shoulders, wipes the blood on his mouth off with the torn silk of his handmade tie, and says, “Q, exit route.”

“Freeway is two clicks away, you can get there faster if you take one of their cars,” Q answers automatically, cracking the security on an oil baron’s Maserati. “License 78D 2X4.”

“You’re a gem,” Bond says, and slips into the car. 

“You’re bleeding on the seats,” Q observes.

“Not your car, Q.”

“I chose the most sophisticated car in that lot, and you are bleeding on it.”

“I’m still better company than it’s master.”

“Setting the bar adequately low, I suppose.”

“Indeed.”

He drives off the compound with a roar of fine-tuned Italian fuel-injection technology. 

Q checks in with his team, arranges further transport and extraction. Then he blinks. Turns on the comms again.

“Bond.”

“Yes, Q?”

“Were you hoping I’d find you another Aston in the middle of the desert?”

“…No.”

“I’m trying to be supportive of your love of the classics, but you also must move _forward,_ 007.”

“Perhaps I’m just missing her,” Bond says lightly.

Q can’t tell whether he is talking about M or the Aston. He chooses the safer route. “Perhaps I’ll keep a look out for another one that needs refurbishing. I will be very upset if you get it shot up again, however.”

Bond huffs.

***

After that, Q sees it everywhere. In an upraised eyebrow, and a small purse of mouth. Bond hasn’t changed—intrinsically, Q knows this—but Q’s view of him has. 

It’s oddly comforting. Clean slate he might shape himself to be, but Bond still carries his ghosts around with him heavily, just like the rest of them. Q can see now, though, how that has become less of a burden, and more of a cloak, for him. 

(If he had been close enough with M before she died, she might have pointed out, too, the way that Bond introduces himself to new contacts, which is all Vesper in its playful observation and cutting smiles, and the way in which his Russian has the same exacting drawl with which Alex Trevelyan used to speak. Bond carries a great many things with him, but nothing that doesn’t serve him, nothing at all that holds him down.)

Q wonders if he will carry Bond around with him when Bond goes, in the quiet of retirement or, more likely, in a hail of gunfire. He hopes he can carry it as gracefully, and as invisibly, as Bond does. 

***

Bond comes in some months later, battered from a stay in Tokyo, bruises on his wrists and jaw that stand out stark against the crisp whiteness of his oxford. He hides a limp somewhat successfully when he enters Q-Branch, and places his handgun and silver square on Q’s worktop, the latter in pieces, though not unrecognisable.

“Would you prefer larger and more elaborate bells and whistles to destroy in the future, 007?” Q asks, inspecting the silver shards. 

“No,” Bond says. “This will do fine.”

“I am not in the business of fine,” Q replies, setting the pieces down again. He meets Bond’s level, unblinking gaze.  “Tell me what you need.”

Bond seems to study him for a moment. Then he asks, “How invisible was I, this time?” 

“M brought me in to find you. Tokyo is heavily surveilled. It did him no good.” 

“Then I don’t need anything.” Bond turns to leave. He’s almost to the door when Q has to speak.

“Why only be a ghost, when you can be a legend?”

Bond stops. Q holds his ground. 

“You almost are, anyway,” he continues, more quietly. “It would take very little.”

“Legends are memorable,” Bond says, unmoving.

“And I should think,” Q says carefully, “That she would have liked you to be remembered.”

Bond bows his head, not turning around. “Liked and hated it, more likely,” he says. “It’s not exactly my job to be visible.”

“Invisibility is the greatest power a legend can have,” Q points out. “The greatest legends are those told of the unseen.”

Finally, _finally,_ Bond turns around, his gaze inscrutable, half-smiling. 

“Am I your Temeraire, Mr. Turner?” he drawls. 

Q opens his mouth. Then shuts it.  

“If anything, I am merely the tugboat,” he says finally. 

“Ah,” Bond says, still with that strange smile. “I don’t know whether to be insulted or amused.”

“You have a great deal more life in you left than that old ship,” Q says, as lightly as he can. “And I don’t much care for tugging.”

“No, you wouldn't,” Bond murmurs, his hands in his pockets even as he left his shoulders open and square. “And what would you have me do, Q?”

“Be as you are,” Q responds instantly. “But…perhaps with a bit more permanence.” 

“Make an institution of myself,” Bond murmurs.

“The other double-0s could learn a great deal from you that way,” Q nods.

“I am not a good example.”

“But you are a very good story.”

“Hmm,” Bond says. 

“Think about it,” Q says, “And maybe I’ll think about how I can design a suit that shields you from infrared goggles.”

Bond blinks slowly, that almost-smile still settled at the corners of his mouth. 

“I won’t give you much to work with,” he says, finally.

“That’s rather the point, I should think,” Q replies.

Just French cuffs, vodka martinis, and a name. 

But there is _life_ in a name.

Bond nods, seemingly to himself, and then turns, tapping his fingers on the doorjamb as he goes. His shoulders are broad and straight. He does not look old, not really.

Q will outlive him. But only in time. 

Q thinks of heat-reflective materials and fine wool and memory. He thinks of cufflinks that erase data from hard drives, and a tie with a knife nestled in its folds, and the power of negative space. 

He goes back to work.

***

Bond is in Tegucigalpa when Eve comes down to Q-Branch. 

“They’ve lost him again,” she says briskly, “M wants you.”

“Yes, of course,” Q says, easily enough, given that technically this is his fault. He saves his work to his private server and falls into step with Eve, following her down into the depths of the labyrinthine corridors that make up the various operations rooms.

He finds Bond within minutes, hidden beneath layers of concrete, but unscathed and active. 

“Apologies,” Bond says briefly, the transmission into HQ tinny. “My earpiece got smashed. I’ve jury-rigged a borrowed one. Q, is that you?”

“Yes, hello 007,” Q says, adjusting the frequency of the new earpiece for better reception. “Those earpieces are very expensive, you know.”

“I look forward to your efforts to bill me,” Bond replies. 

“Status, 007,” Mallory orders.

“Target acquired, but not dead,” Bond says. “Might take a bit more work than previously noted. I’ve seen a lot of crates in the target’s warehouse bearing a stamp of two eagles fighting over an arrow—any insights?”

Mallory swore. “I’m afraid you’ve run into some arms dealers. Do you want an extraction for further reconnaissance?”

“I don’t know, do you want me to avoid them and take care of the target anyway, or do you want me to multitask?” 

Mallory turned to Eve. “Get Pritchard down here, he’s dealt with this group before. Bond, hold your position for now, we’re going to look into whether we have enough resources for the latter option to become a possibility.”

“No rush,” Bond says breezily. “This underpass is surprisingly comfortable.”

Q snorts. Mallory rolls his eyes.

In the end, Pritchard is able to provide the necessary intel, and Bond closes two cases in one go. 

“Well done, 007,” Mallory says. Bond signs off, and everyone but the overseers in charge of cleanup file out of the operations room. Q is already mentally reengaging with the work he’d left off when Eve sidles up next to him.

“One day, you won’t be able to find him either,” she says as they step outside. 

“Mm,” Q says, not denying it.

“Is this what you wanted when you said to let him recalibrate?” she demands. “He’s the most reckless agent we have! It would be all too easy to lose him—“

Q turns to face her. “And that will be the day I give his name to someone else.”

Her eyes narrow. “Someone else?”

“The next 007,” Q replies, shoving his hands in his pockets. “If they’re amenable to it. ‘James Bond’ is a rather good alias, don’t you think? Very nondescript, but has a certain ring to it, nonetheless.”

Eve inhales sharply. “And James has agreed to this?”

“We have an accord,” Q says. 

She gives him a long look. “M can’t possibly approve of it.”

“M knows that both Bond and I will do our utmost to keep Agent 007 alive and functioning,” Q says. “Right up until the moment that neither of us can. But the reason he can count on us to do that now is because I will ensure that this organisation will carry him with us for as long as it stands. And to do that, he has to be more. He has to be relevant to the past and to the future.”

“He has to live,” Eve murmurs.

“Just so.”

“You’re a clever bastard,” she says finally. “And I don’t know whether he deserves it.” 

“He carries a great deal,” Q muses. “It seems only fair that someone returns the favour.”

“Hm,” Eve says. She steps back, and then away down the corridor. “Take care, then,” she says over her shoulder.

“I will,” Q says. 

Bond should be on a plane out of Honduras by now. He will have changed into a darker suit, appropriate for London weather, and ordered a drink. 

Q will make sure his absence from the place he has left is felt, just as it is and will be felt across the globe. He doesn’t really know if M would approve, but he rather hopes she would. It’s an odd hope, that a spy should be remembered. But perhaps it's one triumph that Q can claim against Silva. 

Appropriate, then, that it is in the construction of a cipher.

(Across the ocean, Bond sips at his drink, and breathes.)


End file.
